Augmented reality (AR) includes an interactive experience where a real-world environment and/or object is “augmented” by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, visual, auditory, and haptic. For example, a user can point a device (e.g., a smartphone) at a certain object (e.g., a 2D image on a poster, a 2D video displaying on a monitor, a 3D object) that when detected signals the device to augment the experience by displaying something on a screen, playing a sound through a speaker, or causing vibrations through a motor of the device. For example, with the correct smartphone application, a user smartphone could be used to detect a trigger or marker, such as on a graphic embedded in a music band's promotional t-shirt, and overlay on the smartphone's display a moving graphic that augments the physical t-shirt design viewable trough the display. The first wave of AR development may have primarily focused on getting the technology to function. Such developments have focused on, for example, the complex interactions of associating a physical environment and/or object with an augment, consistently having the augment work, and then providing an exciting or useful augmented experience to a user.
Augmented reality may represent a huge commercial opportunity, including in the areas of entertainment, advertising, education, commerce, industry (e.g., guiding a working to make repairs and recognize equipment components), and transportation (e.g., augmented reality windshields in cars permitting better interpretation of road conditions, obstacles, navigation, etc.).
Despite these opportunities, there still may be significant challenges for AR. Some employing organizations such as companies, educational institutions, governments, or other types of organization may wish to deploy many coordinating instances across several locations and/or objects for a large advertising campaign, sponsored event, an/or educational experience. They may have difficulty defining individual augments into a coordinated plan that meets their intended purpose, which may limit the scope of the physical world and/or reality that can be augmented. Especially when used for games and promotions, the deploying organization may find it difficult to define fun and exciting experiences where they may have limited capability to define or control the AR deployment. For some AR deployments, especially which may require large data files, the user may either have to know ahead of time which files to download or the deploying organization may have to guess which data files may be relevant to the user. This may lead to wasted memory and bandwidth, or where the augment file is requested on-demand at the time the marker is detected, may lead to a delay or faulty experience where the file is large and/or connectivity of a network is poor.
Similarly, because the AR deployment may have a tie to the physical world (e.g., the physical environment including the marker that initiates the augment), the deploying organization may wish to provide the augmented experience (an any reward that comes with participation) only to users who truly visit the physical environment and/or engage in the experience. For example, where a marker that initiates an augment is a mural and the first ten people to visit are to receive a prize, a user may be able to find a photo on the internet that can be placed in front of the device to falsify presence at the physical environment of the marker, playing the augment and submitting for the prize. In its lease concerning aspect, this may diminish the experience of a contest. On the other hand, where the prize may be large (e.g., a new automobile) this may be a significant risk to the deploying organization.
Thus, an opportunity remains for an improved capability for an augmented reality deployment, from stand-along deployments of a single marker and augment to potentially massive AR deployments requiring high certainty that users actually interacted with and/or were within the physical environment specified by the deploying organization. As a result, the deploying organization may only be able to define a reduced reality for augmentation, have a limited ability to change and/or control the deployment, and little or no ability to verify a user's interaction with the intended physical environment. The result may be reduced user engagement, diminished user experience, lost revenue, and/or even fraud.